Henry Kissinger helped craft the U.S. 'One China' policy with the People's Republic of China during the Nixon and Ford administrations
He met with President-elect Donald Trump during and after the campaign
On Friday, Kissinger met with Chinese President Xi Jinpeng in Beijing
Trump set off a diplomatic imbroglio when his transition announced that he had spoken by phone with the leader of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen

Kissinger and Trump are to meet at Trump Tower today
President-elect Donald Trump is set to meet with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who helped craft the ambiguous U.S. 'One China' policy – after Trump set off a diplomatic storm by holding a phone call with the head of Taiwan.

The two men are set to meet today at Trump Tower, Trump's transition confirmed Monday.

Kissinger met with Chinese President Xi Jinpeng in Beijing on Friday, in a trip taken in some circles as an effort to reassure China, after a campaign where Trump's blistering rhetoric about the country's trade and currency policies were a constant feature.

Trump and Kissinger met previously during the election campaign, speaking in May at Kissinger's home. They also met in November soon after Trump won the election.

Trump ignored a question about the meeting during brief comments to reporters on Tuesday.

'President-elect Trump and Dr. Kissinger have known each other for years and had a great meeting,' Trump's transition said at the time. 'They discussed China, Russia, Iran, the EU and other events and issues around the world.'

Trump on Friday spoke with Taiwanese President Tsai lng-wen, setting off a diplomatic firestorm in the U.S., even as China's initial reaction was muted.

The Chinese have reacted with outrage in the past at efforts to provide additional recognition for the government in Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway part of its historic territory.

The Trump transition said the call was a 'courtesy,' and Trump tweeted afterward that it was Tsai who had called him.

The Washington Post reported that the call wasn't an early stumble by a foreign policy novice, but rather had been something that was considered for weeks in advance by advisors.

The White House sought to reassure China following Trump's call, the White House said Monday.

White House National Security officials had been in contact two times over the weekend with officials in Beijing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, to reassure them that the 'One China' policy remains intact.

The calls were to 'reiterate and clarify the continued commitment of the United States to our longstanding China policy,' Earnest said.

'The Chinese government in Beijing placed an enormous priority on this situation, and it's a sensitive matter,' Earnest said of the phone call on Monday. 'Some of the progress that we have made in our relationship with China could be undermined by this issue flaring up.'

'One phone call does not mean a policy shift,' Tsai told USA TODAY in comments reported Monday. 'We all see the value of stability in the region.'

The call was the first from a U.S. president or president-elect with a Taiwanese president since the onset of the 'One China' policy after President Jimmy Carter switched U.S. recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979.

Vice president-elect Mike Pence said Sunday that the incident was overblown.

'She reached out to the president-elect and he took the call from the democratically elected leader of Taiwan,' he said on Meet The Press. 'I think most Americans, and frankly most leaders around the world, know this for what it was.'

Former secretary of state Kissinger, now 92, was President Nixon's national security advisor in 1972 when he made his historic trip to China.

Chinese gave 'stern representations' following the call, Reuters reported.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the comments had gone to the 'relevant side' in the U.S.

'The whole world knows about the Chinese government's position on the Taiwan issue. I think President-elect Trump and his team are also clear,' Lu said at a briefing._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Trump Floats Ban on Defense Firms Hiring Military Procurement Officials … US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he was considering imposing a lifetime ban on US military procurement officials going to work for defense contractors, a move that could dramatically reshape the defense industry. -Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump has said Boeing & Co. prices are ridiculous and now he wants to ban government military officials from working with private contractors. But if Trump really wants to root out Pentagon corruption he should start with the nation’s nuclear weapons program which is over-hyped and patently false in at least some particulars.

Begin with the development of “atomic bombs” supervised by J. Robert Oppenheimer affiliated with the New York-based Fellowship of the New Life, here, a progressive society that advanced non-religious morality under the slogan “deed not creed.” Offshoots of this sort of progressive philosophy gave rise to the Fabian Society in England.

It is certainly possible that Oppenheimer could have considered his participation in a string of nuclear lies as a moral imperative. In any case, here are facts pertaining casting doubt on the ongoing nuclear narrative:

The historical development of nuclear weapons was obviously high restricted. In fact, it was reported on by a single New York Times journalist, here, who later, it was revealed, was also on the Pentagon payroll.
There are considerable questions about the radiation involved with nuclear weapons generally. Nuclear physicist Galen Winsor, here, was a skeptic who claimed nuclear power plants were “essentially just steam plants and nothing but the most expensive and effective way to boil water.” He used to eat “radioactive waste” on camera and said he did so often to prove the exaggerations surrounding uranium radioactivity. He died of Parkinson’s – reportedly at 82. Additionally, it should be pointed out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fully populated now, and have been since the initial bombings, though according to prevailing literature they shouldn’t be.
Crawford Sams who ran the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan had this to say about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Transcript here.): “When the bomb went off, about 2 thousand people out of 250 thousand got killed [in Hiroshima] by blast, by thermal radiation, or by intense x-ray, gamma radiation … You see, it wasn’t “Bing” like the publicity here [said]: a bomb went off and a city disappeared. No such thing happened. That was the propaganda for deterrent … When I came back to this country, I was appalled, from a military standpoint, to find that our major planners in the War Department were using their own propaganda, 100 thousand deaths, Bing! … You don’t hear much about the effects of Nagasaki because actually it was pretty ineffective. That was a narrow corridor from the hospital … down to the port, and the effects were very limited as far as the fire spread and all that stuff. So you don’t hear much.
There was only a single reporter, here, who reported definitively on radioactivity at Hiroshima by breaching the month long security ban affecting both cities after the blasts. He later reported on US “war crimes” from Korea and was shown to falsifying his reporting.
The available videos of atomic blasts are enhanced (if not entirely falsified) as even the New York Times writes, here.
At least one video on Youtube shows the Pentagon mimicking an atomic explosion with dynamite in a mid 1960s Hawaii detonation called Sailor Hat, here.
As have others who have examined the issue, we have realized that Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been firebombed before any “atomic bomb” was dropped on them, here and here.

Our conclusions were advanced by information that when atomic bombs were supposedly dropped on Japan, a squadron of 66 bombers was directed to Imabari. in the early morning of August 6 (666), though Imabari. had been bombed already, twice. This bombing squadron might well have fire-bombed Hiroshima instead. here.

As a result of our articles, we received two communications from a man who claimed to have been part of these unacknowledged fire-bombing sorties. An excerpt here from the first:

ALPHAMEG a month ago:

Well now!! i was a pilot of a B 29, on the raids of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. i am 96 years old.

Yes we firebombed these cities as well as Tokyo. But there were A bombs dropped on the two cities in question…
We responded here and he responded in that article’s feedback section, see below. Apparently the firebombing of Hiroshima was launched from Tinian Island, also said to be the takeoff point for A-bomb attacks.

ALPHAMEG 3 weeks ago:
War is a nightmare. Killing is never forgotten. Forgetfulness? Not likely. Gen. LeMay was a warrior.

His game was to hit the enemy with everything he had, and go home. We flew from Tinian Island, near Saipan. We were the 21st Bomber Group. Most of our targets were with incendiaries. We flew day and night raids, dependent on the weather at destination. If primary targets were obscured, we had secondary targets. Always went home empty.

LeMay wanted to drop a big one right on the Imperial Palace but was over ruled by Truman, just as McArthur was in his desire to proceed into Manchuria, and knock on the door of Stalin, and ask him if he would like to view the Japanese cities. And offer Joe a deal he couldn’t refuse. A brilliant scheme that could have nipped the following 40 year Cold War. These are the kind of warriors we need today. Heads will roll.

There are plenty more anomalies that significantly call into question both the history and effect of “nuclear weapons.” You can see a fuller list here and here and here.

The Pentagon wants to spend one trillion updating its “nuclear deterrent.” Before the US “congress” approves the entire sum, Trump should approve an investigation of the Pentagon to find out the actual efficacy of nuclear weapons and how much they really cost to build and deploy.

Boeing is apparently attempt to charge the White House some $3 billion, here, for upgraded planes. After Trump complained, Boeing is apparently reconsidering. Chances are if an investigation was launched into the reality of nuclear weapons in the US, nuclear weapons contractors would suddenly reduce their expenses and subsequent charges.

Additionally, the Pentagon should surely be prevailed on to “test” a nuclear weapon publicly and without restrictions. Perhaps nuclear weapons perform exactly as advertised. But not once in the history of nuclear weapons has such a weapon been actually used in warfare though every other kind of hellacious weapon has been applied to the globe’s numerous wars. This makes little sense.

In other words, the same country that drops napalm on children and kills some 500,000 children in Iraq (see Madeline Albright here) has such moral qualms about nuclear weapons that they are not used – ever.

The wars that took place in the 20th century were accompanied by pervasive and massive falsehoods. World War One was seemingly not an accident, as is related in history books. It only happened after Europe’s most prominent and influential anti-war leaders were targeted for assassination. Rasuputin here was stabbed but did not die. Archduke Ferdinand was shot, here, and his death was a justification to precipitate the war.

World War Two, was supposedly started by Hitler, but his funding, as is now reported in numerous places on the Internet, came from Western and Swiss banks including possibly central banks, here. After both wars, significant advances in global infrastructure were imposed.

Public narratives issued by government should be regarded with caution. Government by necessity must aggrandize both its power and the threats it faces. Its conduct, worldwide, is often in variance with reality.

The Pentagon has officially mislaid some $8 trillion in funds, here, stands accused most recently of hiding an additional $150 billion in “waste,” here. Yet for some reason we are supposed to take the Pentagon at its word when it provides “budgets” for weapons and resources it must have.

Thanks to the Internet, most people harbor more skepticism when it comes to official pronouncement. And the mainstream media is held in lower regard than ever. Given the prevalence of the unbelievable “fake news” meme it is a wonder that so many people still believe in the entire government narrative regarding nuclear weapons.

These weapons are almost never directly examined by the public and their tests, when conducted, are hidden away from public eyes. Even their workings are shrouded in mystery. And it remains a capital offense to discuss these weapons intimately – or their impact.

The clash between plutocratic President-elect Trump and the CIA is shaping up to be the heavy-weight prize fight of the century, and Trump at least is approaching it with all the entertaining bombast of Mohammed Ali at the top of his game. Rather than following the tradition of doing dirty political deals in dark corners, more commonly known as fixing the match, Trump has come out swinging in the full glare of the media.

In that corner we have a deal-making, billionaire “man of the people” who, to European sensibilities at least, reputedly espouses some of the madder US domestic obsessions and yet has seemed to offer hope to many aggrieved Americans. However, it is his professed position on building a rapprochement with Russia and cooperating with Moscow to sort out the Syrian mess that caught my attention and that of many other independent commentators internationally.

In the opposite corner his opponents have pushed the CIA into the ring to deliver the knock-out blow, but this has yet to land. Despite jab after failed jab, Trump keeps evading the blows and comes rattling back against all the odds. One has to admire the guy’s footwork.

So who are the opponents ranged behind the CIA, yelling encouragement through the ropes? The obvious culprits include the US military industrial complex, whose bottom line relies on an era of unending war. As justification for extracting billions – even trillions – of dollars from American taxpayers, there was a need for frightening villains such as Al Qaeda and, even more so, the head choppers of ISIS. However, since the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, those villains no longer packed so scary a punch, so a more enduring villain, like Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy in George Orwell’s “1984”, was required. Russia was the obvious new choice, the old favourite from the Cold War play book.

The western intelligence agencies have a vested interest in eternal enemies to ensure both eternal funding and eternal power, hence the CIA’s entry into the fight. As former British MP and long-time peace activist George Galloway so eloquently said in a recent interview, an unholy alliance is now being formed between the “war party” in the US, the military-industrial-intelligence complex and those who previously would have publicly spurned such accomplices: American progressives and their traditional host, the Democratic Party.

Yet, if the DNC had not done its best to rig the primaries in favour of Hillary Clinton, then perhaps we would not be in this position. Bernie Sanders would now be the President-elect.

These establishment forces have also revealed to the wider world a fact long known but largely dismissed as conspiracy theory by the corporate mainstream media, that the two-party system in both the US and the UK is a sham. In fact, we are governed by a globalised elite, working in its own interest while ignoring ours. The Democrats, openly disgruntled by Hillary Clinton’s election loss and being seen to jump into bed so quickly with the spooks and the warmongers, have laid this reality bare.

In fact, respected US investigative journalist Robert Parry recently wrote that an intelligence contact admitted to him before the election that the intelligence agencies did not like either of the presidential candidates. This may go some way to explaining the FBI’s intervention in the run up to the election against Hillary Clinton, as well as the CIA’s attempts to de-legitimise Trump’s victory afterwards.

Whether that was indeed the case, the CIA has certainly held back no punches since Trump’s election. First the evidence-lite assertion that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC emails and leaked them to Wikileaks: then the fake news about Russia hacking the voting computers; that then morphed into the Russians “hacked the election” itself; then they “hacked” into the US electric grid via a Vermont utility. All this without a shred of fact-based evidence provided, but Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats last month solidified this dubious reality in Americans’ minds.

All this has so far culminated, of course, in the “dirty dossier” allegations last week about Trump, which he has rightly knocked down – it was desperately poor stuff.

This last item, from a British perspective, is particularly concerning. It appears that a Washington dirt-digging company was hired by a Republican rival to Trump to unearth any potential Russian scandals during the primaries; once Trump had won the nomination this dirt-digging jobbery was then taken over by a Democrat supporter of Hillary Clinton. The anti-Trump investigation was then sub-contracted to an alleged former British spy, an ex-MI6 man named Christopher Steele.

Much has already been written about Steele and the company, much of it contradictory as no doubt befits the life of a former spy. But it is a standard career trajectory for insiders to move on to corporate, mercenary spy companies, and this is what Steele appears to have done successfully in 2009. Of course much is predicated on maintaining good working relations with your former employers.

That is the aspect that interests me most – how close a linkage did he indeed retain with his former employers after he left MI6 in 2009 to set up his own private spy company? The answer is important because companies such has his can also be used as cut-outs for “plausible deniability” by official state spies.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that happened in this case, but Steele reportedly remained on good terms with MI6 and was well thought of. For a man who had not been stationed in Russia for over 20 years, it would perhaps have been natural for him to turn to old chums for useful connections.

But this question is of extreme importance at a critical juncture for the UK; if indeed MI6 was complicit or even aware of this dirt digging, as it seems it might have been, then that is a huge diplomatic problem for the government’s attempts to develop a strong working relationship with the US, post-Brexit. If MI6’s sticky fingers were on this case, then the organisation has done the precise opposite of its official task – “to protect national security and the economic well-being of the UK”.

MI6 and its US intelligence chums need to remember their designated and legislated roles within a democracy – to serve the government and protect national security by gathering intelligence, assessing it impartially and making recommendations on which the government of the day will choose to act or not as the case may be.

The spies are not there to fake intelligence to suit the agenda of a particular regime, as happened in the run-up to the illegal Iraq war, nor are they there to endemically spy on their own populations (and the rest of the world, as we know post-Snowden) in a pointless hunt for subversive activity, which often translates into legitimate political activism and acts of individual expression.

And most especially the intelligence agencies should not be trying to subvert democratically elected governments. And yet this is what the CIA and a former senior MI6 officer, along with their powerful political allies, appear to be now attempting against Trump.

If I were an American I would be wary of many of Trump’s domestic policies. As a European concerned with greater peace rather than increasing war, I can only applaud his constructive approach towards Russia and his offer to cooperate with Moscow to staunch the bloodshed in the Middle East.

That, of course, may be nub of his fight with the CIA and other vested interests who want Russia as the new bogeyman. But I would bet that Trump takes the CIA’s slurs personally. After all, given the ugliness of the accusations and the lack of proof, who would not?

So, this is a world championship heavy-weight fight, over who gets to hold office and wield power, an area where the US and UK intelligence agencies have considerable experience in rigging matches and knocking out opponents. Think, for instance, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953; Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973; Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003; and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria is punch-drunk but still standing, thanks to some good corner support from Russia.

However, it would appear that Trump is a stranger to the spies’ self-defined Queensbury Rules in which targets are deemed paranoid if they try to alert the public to the planned “regime change” or they become easy targets by staying silent. By contrast, Trump appears shameless and pugnacious. Street-smart and self-promoting, he seems comfortable with bare-knuckle fighting.

On 18 December last year I wrote an article about the possibility of a coup d’etat in the USA, planned and executed by the CIA and other participants in the Deep State.

At the time I just wanted to highlight the potential problems that were arising from the CIA’s and the American elite’s objection to a Trump presidency and failure of the Clinton candidacy.

However, following fake news of the “Vermont hack” and the failure of the debunked report on “Russian hacking” of the election last week, it seems that the CIA and the wider deep state is dramatically raising the stakes today, with leaks to the media of dubious reports from a corporate spy company alleging corruption and sexual deviancy. How low can they go?

I would laugh at this farrago of nonsense if this escalation of accusation did not imply such an increasingly deadly course, on the part of the American establishment, to push for a showdown with Russia at any cost in 2017.

First published on RT:

I fear that soon the curtain will finally be brought down on the puppet show that passes for democracy in America, and those who for decades have been pulling the strings will come raging into the light, red in tooth and claw. The illusion that the people really have a choice of president every four years will be irreparably shattered.

The old British truism that “it does not matter whom you vote for, the government always gets in” can also be applied to the US presidency – usually all candidates are approved and massively funded by the modern incarnation of Eisenhower’s infamous “military-industrial complex” and then assiduously supported by cheerleaders in the old corporate media, leaving the electorate with damn little meaningful choice.

This has been true from Reagan to Bush the First, from Clinton the First to Bush the Second and then on to Obama (the First?). It was supposed to have been true in the most recent election, where the elite’s choice pointed towards a contest between Bush the Third or Clinton the Second, either one of whom would have worked to the interests of Wall Street and continued the increasingly dangerous, interventionist, and hawkish global US foreign policy.

As a little aside, since when did the USA fall for the concept of inherited political power, a de facto new monarchy?

But then an oxymoronic billionaire “man of the people” crowbarred his way into the contest and slashed all the strings of puppetry and privilege. Enter, stage left, the bullish, seemingly bigoted, and bemusingly successful Donald Trump.

As a Brit, currently cut adrift in a pre-Brexit Europe, I hold no brief for the dangers he may or may not pose to the much-vaunted American way of life in the good ol’ homeland. However, as I have stated before, with The Donald’s apparent determination to follow a strategy of US isolationism, to cut a deal in Syria, and effect a rapprochement with Russia, the wider world may just have dodged a nuclear bullet or at least an era of unending war.

Plus, the American people appear to have wanted a change, any change, from the hereditary privilege of the Washington elite. That change could well have come from another outsider, Bernie Sanders, if he had been given a fair chance. However, as we know from the leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Podesta emails, the Democratic Party would stop at nothing to ensure the anointing of the chosen one – Clinton the Second

So why do I think that there may be a coup d’etat looming in America’s near future?

Trump was elected on the promise of “draining the swamp” of the Washington political and corporate elites – this is deeply threatening to the vested interests, not least the CIA, whose daily briefings have been spurned by Trump, thereby rupturing the co-dependent relationship between the president and the politicly compromised intelligence agencies that has existed since 9/11 and which has caused so much global harm, starting with the ill-informed and illegal rush to war in Iraq in 2003. I shall return to the CIA later.

The American elite is facing the inauguration of a self-professed outsider who is threatening all their easily-bought privileges, one who seems more interested in cutting deals than bombing countries. Nor do they like his nominees to high office, especially that of Rex Tillerson, the current CEO of ExxonMobil, to the post of Secretary of State – after all, he has a track record of cutting deals too and with the Russians no less, and such a person as the top US diplomat might, gasp, help to bring to a close the new not-so-Cold War that is so important to the hawkish warmongers and their masters in the thriving US arms and security industry.

Therefore once Trump had been declared the official Republican nominee, the establishment push-back was all too predictable. The story of “Russian hacking” was initially trailed merely as media bait to divert the press from the real story – Hillary Clinton’s potentially illegal use of a private web server while acting as Secretary of State.

Then in November Wikileaks began to release even more damaging emails from the DNC and the Podesta files, which demonstrated quite how the Democrats had stitched up the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. The Democrats immediately cried foul – it must indeed be the Russians hacking their files and handing the information to Wikileaks (now cast as a Russian stooge – a move extremely useful in America’s ongoing attempts to frame the prosecution of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange as “espionage”, even though he is an Australian publisher stuck in Europe).

Unusually Assange went on the record to say the emails Wikileaks published did not come from the Russians: Wikileaks traditionally refuses to discuss its sources.

Then former UK Ambassador and Wikileaks ally, Craig Murray, went public by saying that, while he was in Washington earlier this year, he was given files that were then published on Wikileaks. His view is that the information came from a Democrat whistleblower with legal access – it was a leak by an insider, not a hack by an outsider.

Also earlier this week a group of former senior US intelligence officials, including the former Technical Director of the NSA, wrote an open letter to Congress explaining that, if indeed the Russians had hacked the DNC, the NSA would have been able to provide evidence to to prove this. Yet, at such a time of potential constitutional crisis, none has been forthcoming, either directly or via the CIA, even in the face of calls for the usual congressional hearings and special investigations.

So there is apparently no substantive evidence of Russian hacking during the election. However, there does appear to be some evidence around the issue of Clinton’s illegal server.

Eleven days before the American election the Director of the FBI, in the wake of the Anthony Weiner sexting case, reopened the investigation into the Clinton server scandal and published the fact, as he said, in the national interest. This caused howls of rage from the Democrats, and again “Russian hacking” was hyped in the media, thereby easily conflating the concept of the illegal server, the alleged hacks, the Russians, into one big lump of geek-speak that most people would not have the will to disentangle. Two days before the election, James Comey backed down, but the hacking seed had germinated.

Now it is coming into bloom – last week the CIA re-entered the fray, with reports about Russian hacking leaked to both the Washington Post and the New York Times. Since then, nameless “intelligence sources” and grandstanding politicians have been falling over themselves to speak to this subject, but it all remains very evidence-lite.

Plus there is apparently by no means a consensus amongst all seventeen of the US intelligence agencies with regards to the CIA’s claims. Indeed, until recently the FBI has directly contradicted them, and the FBI is in the business of pulling together evidence to prosecute a case under law.

That, now, is all changing. Only recently it was reported that the FBI is now supporting the CIA’s “beliefs”. I was puzzled about this volte face until I read this prominent op-ed by Clinton campaign manager, John Podesta, in the Washington Post where, in addition to blaming the Russians for “hacking the election” (note, no longer just the DNC emails and his own), he is attacking the FBI and its head, James Comey, and suggesting that the organisation is broken and “what’s broken in the FBI must be fixed and quickly”. Perhaps, for whatever reason, Comey can see the overturning of the election result as a real possibility now and is desperately rowing back.

In parallel, it seems that the CIA is fearful of retaliation if, against all their endeavours, Donald Trump does indeed get sworn in as the 45th president of the USA on 20th January next year. That goes some way to explaining why they are challenging the election result by pushing this line that the Russians “hacked the election”, the new headline that has morphed through the global MSM over the last couple of days from belief to established fact, with no evidence produced.

The CIA claims that Russian “hackers” were delving around in the emails of both the Democratic National Congress as well as the Republican equivalent for months before the November election. And yet only the Democrat emails were, the CIA asserts, passed on to Wikileaks and thereby published to order to sway the election result. Where is the proof? They have produced no evidence, in the face of of expert testimony from former senior intelligence officers as well as direct assertions from Wikileaks about the source of the DNC leaks. Indeed, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, is refusing to brief the Congressional intelligence committees’ repeated requests to give a briefing.

That has not stopped the global mainstream media from whipping up an imagined new truth: that the Russians “hacked the election”. And the media frenzy has grown exponentially over the last few days.

This is why I fear an American coup d’etat, possibly starting as soon as 19th December, the date when the Electoral College meets to ratify the election of Trump. All this Cold-War, anti-Russian hysteria is being used as a stick to beat the Electoral College members into ignoring their duty and vote in the way directed by the majority of the people of their state whom they are pledged to represent. Plus, who knows what juicy carrots may also have been offered?

If enough prove faithless to the electorate, then the election result will be overturned and Clinton the Second could ascend to the American throne. Even if the Electoral College does its sworn duty to the people, I fear that the CIA anti-Trump campaign may now have gathered so much momentum that the establishment may still find a way, any way possible, to stop Trump’s inauguration as president – after all we still have five weeks to get through before 20th January.

A preview of Trump’s seven imminent executive orders
BY TYLER DURDEN - 01.23.2017 @11:27 AM EST
trump at inauguration
National Museum of the U.S. Navy/Flickr

Having already signed a (mostly symbolic) executive order on Obamacare on Friday night, urging US agencies to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions deemed to impose fiscal burdens on states, companies or individuals, Trump is preparing to unload a volley of many more executive orders. Courtesy of Axios, which quotes “one of the best-wired Republican lobbyists in town”, here is a preview of the initial round of Trump executive actions, some of which may hit as soon as Sunday afternoon:

Look for a possible hiring freeze at executive branch
5-year lobbying ban on transition and administration officials
Mexico City policy, which prevents foreign NGOs from getting U.S. family planning money if they provide abortions with non-U.S. funds. (It’s already illegal to use U.S dollars on abortions.)
Task the Defense Secretary and joint chiefs to come up with plan to eviscerate ISIS
Report on readiness, and something cyber security related
Border/immigration: Something on sanctuary cities, expand E-Verify, an extreme vetting proposal
Trade: Withdraw from TPP and a thorough review of NAFTA
Axios also notes that “the Mexico City executive order could come as soon as today.”

Furthermore, watch for dozens of EPA executive orders coming down the pike. “Says a Trump source: “EPA has clean water-related and some 30,000 foot regulatory ones lined up [immediately]…We have dozens for the EPA…Starting Monday through the month of February. We have to roll them out gradually.”

As we laid out before, here is a brief summary of what Trump can (and can not do) on day one. Exhibit 3 lists the President’s “Contract with Voters”, which includes several items that can be accomplished through executive action but involves significant legislative activity as well.

The “budget reconciliation” process allows the majority party to instruct various committees to pass legislation to achieve certain fiscal targets, for example to reduce the deficit by a certain amount over the next ten years. These instructions, along with spending and revenue targets, are included in the annual budget resolution that Congress is supposed to pass by April of each year. Legislation passed pursuant to these instructions enjoys procedural protections in the House and Senate; most importantly, it is immune to filibuster in the Senate and thus needs only 51 votes to pass. The budget resolution can provide instructions to pass as many as three reconciliation bills, one dealing with tax or revenue changes, one dealing with spending changes, and one dealing with the debt limit. This year, tax reform is likely to be addressed through reconciliation, as are changes to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). It is possible that congressional leaders might also consider using this process to address infrastructure funding, certain entitlement program reforms, or the debt limit increase that appear to be necessary by Q3.

A Multi-Step Budget Process:

Via Zero Hedeg
Via Zero Hedge
Finally, here again are the main differences between the House tax plan and that of the president.

Via Zero Hedeg
Via Zero Hedge
Via Zero Hedge

Featured Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy/Flickr

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Actual human blood used in painting to protest Trump
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Corporate media literally hates Trump because he wants to put you first
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D.C. police can not use body cams during the Inauguration despite threats of terror
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What fun it is to watch Theresa Mayormaynot leap effortlessly from her privileged disdain for all things Donald to blowing his Trumpet on the failure of “interventionist foreign policy”. Our Prime Minister’s pyrotechnic political gymnastics just keep on getting better: she is emerging as the nearest thing Britain has to a Cruella D’Evile Knievel peddling like mad through the thin air between two sides of the Grand Canyon.

Mother Theresa had wangled not just the first signature in the Trump Visitors’ Book, but also a joint press conference with he of the preceding hairline. Just think about it: eight months ago she was a failing Home Secretary Remainer licking the likes of David Cameron, Jean-Claude Juncker and Hillary Clinton all over. Now that’s all over, she’s reduced to following in the clod-hopping footsteps of Nigel Farage. Not so much How the Mighty are Fallen, more How the Flighty like Mugging with the Famous.

But of course, this isn’t just Theresa’s ego, oh no – that’s only about 93% of the story. This is about geopolitics: May needs to show the punks in Brussels and the drunk in Luxembourg that she’s a big girl now and can put trade deals together that don’t involve a €58 billion deficit every year.

Talking last night to people in Washington, I think it’s fair to say that May gave good head to the Republican Party (about which institution, Trump gives not a *) but that the impression made on Day One in US media was close to nothing. But then, Theresa – like all British leaders since Churchill – needs the reflective light of a President in office to capture the average American’s attention. And today was her big day.

To be honest, the occasion was all over the place. The meeting started late; the press pack was told the presser would therefore be very late…but then, ten twenty minutes early, it started. Those of us able to divide hours into minutes therefore concluded that the private meeting had been, um, brief. However, it then turned out that they were going away to talk some more. Make of that what you will.

Trump gave the usual less than convincing we-love-Britain-dearly schmooze that those of us on this side of the Pond have heard 7,405 times; but to be fair he was polite, gracious and sounded more like he meant it than Obama. May’s response was startling in that she talked about “the bonds of history between us”….but she muffed ‘bonds’ and it came out like ‘bombs’. For a moment I thought we were having an outbreak of honesty, but nobody else reacted. So I have to assume that I have Freudian tympanic membranes.

I wanted to give May 11 out of 10 for her response when, Trump having said he wasn’t wild about Russian sanctions, she said well Buddy, we are. I don’t agree with her on this, but she didn’t shrink from her support for State/Pentagon foreign policy. What I found hard to marry was this “viewpoint” with what she’d said in her speech of the day before about less of the intervening thing.

But then, Mother Theresa is inclined to say one thing in May, something different in January, and then something just as different the next day in January. You always know where you are with the Prime Minister: what’s a lot less clear is whereTF she is.

Not surprisingly, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg got an early question slot. I found her choice of subject and élite bias utterly predictable, in that she focused on torture during interrogation and abortion as Trump views “that most people in Britain find alarming”. As it happens, I do too: but “most people” was one of those bubble-dwelling opinions casually sprayed out by the 3% in W1 and W2 on behalf of the 97% who live somewhere very different, and thus think very differently.

Oddly – given privileged multicultural wild-child Laura had directed the question at Trump – May took it. She took it, blathered all over it, said the President had told her he was “100% behind NATO” and then grinned oddly. So it fell to The Donald to say he believed in torture, but his top general didn’t…but as he’d appointed the guy, it seemed only fair to let him get on with it in his own way.

A question about Brexit had President Trump showing his most unattractive trait – that of “I told you what would happen and I called it right” – but more pertinently saying that it was easier to deal with individual EU member States than Brussels functionaries. This was an obvious dig at those who prefer the TTIP globalist approach.

Much funnier was the Fox News bloke’s question to Theresa May as to whether she was concerned about the US relationship with Mexico. Trump jumped in to suggest she might have more pressing things on her mind, and the PM told a baffled audience that both she and the President had the needs of ordinary people at the centre of their philosophy.

Then Donald Trump said thank you very much to nobody in particular, and the Happy Couple walked offstage.

mesmileOver the next hour, the BBC told us what we’d already heard, which was good of them. It was a classic case of regurgitated narrative one hundred per cent deficient in useful analysis or insight. Not once did anyone – anchor, hack in the field or guest talking head – scoff at the idea of two people who, after a twenty-minute meeting, asked us to believe that they had established a viable working relationship.

OK, not going to happen, but it's way over the 100,000 to guarantee questions in Parliament.
It stands at 504,000 plus at the moment (I just checked again - it's gone up by over 10,000 in ten minutes! Let's try for a million +
It really is incredible! Check the link!

And spread the link to your lists._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Why would anyone want to stop Trump from visiting the UK?? You didn't say.

If you don't know, I suggest you go back to sleep.
I was glad he knocked Clinton out of the race - now it's time to block him._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Tally now 833,000 and rising!_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Coming from someone who believes in the Man Made Climate Change hoax I believe that parody is well and truly dead. If you don't allow others to express their views freely then there is no freedom of speech and whatever you think of Trump and his views he just might be right and you might just be wrong. Allowing him to speak his thoughts is no worse than allowing you to express yours. Your anger at what he represents is no different from the annoyance at what some might see as your views. Don't you have some books to burn?

Coming from someone who believes in the Man Made Climate Change hoax I believe that parody is well and truly dead. If you don't allow others to express their views freely then there is no freedom of speech and whatever you think of Trump and his views he just might be right and you might just be wrong. Allowing him to speak his thoughts is no worse than allowing you to express yours. Your anger at what he represents is no different from the annoyance at what some might see as your views. Don't you have some books to burn?

Of course your entitled to your views - but to ask me what is wrong with Trump indicates you're not following his appointments and actions.

I supported Trump over Clinton, but now he's seen her off, I'll campaign against 'It'.

I don't burn books, I read them, that's why I know what is going on._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

One of the first things he did was to scrap the TTIP. BINGO!!! Our NHS is saved. He is now busy draining the swamp and while I recognize George Washington was a slave owner and less than perfect I thank God he did what he did. I see Trump in the same light. He has many imperfections but his heart is in the right place and is a patriot. He intends to undo the globalist's agenda and will probably be murdered and knows it. What a courageous individual.

One of the first things he did was to scrap the TTIP. BINGO!!! Our NHS is saved. He is now busy draining the swamp and while I recognize George Washington was a slave owner and less than perfect I thank God he did what he did. I see Trump in the same light. He has many imperfections but his heart is in the right place and is a patriot. He intends to undo the globalist's agenda and will probably be murdered and knows it. What a courageous individual.

Yeh, right. But offiicially reintroducing torture? Some 'Knight in Shining Armour'. I don't think you will hold a rosy view of 'it' for long, once 'it's' policies start to kick in._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

I don't really hold any string opinions about Trump but get very suspicious that big demos, online petitions etc against him have surfaced so quickly before he has got his feet under the table..

whats the problem with a wall? I bet most of us have fences, walls around are gardens or yards and have the right to remove any implied right of access who comes through them. Walls only become a problem for those who want to trespass. Walls without gates may be more problematical.

Ask me again in a year and I might be more willing to sign_________________JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12

My main problem with Trump is that a ruthless businessman is obviously not going to make a good president
Except for the Rockefeller/Kissinger business faction

Everybody's reason for signing will be different
Mine was simply that to ban people from Muslim countries reinforces the bonkers idea of Arab nations being more of a threat to the US than Israel
Wikispooks 911 Israel Did It article? Saudi 911 hijackers anyone?

fish5133 wrote:

I don't really hold any string opinions about Trump but get very suspicious that big demos, online petitions etc against him have surfaced so quickly before he has got his feet under the table..

whats the problem with a wall? I bet most of us have fences, walls around are gardens or yards and have the right to remove any implied right of access who comes through them. Walls only become a problem for those who want to trespass. Walls without gates may be more problematical.

Ask me again in a year and I might be more willing to sign

_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Did you think the same disdain for Bush and Obama who embraced torture as a means to an end or is it just when Trump says so that you are enraged?

I never saw Trump as a 'Knight in shining armour' - he is vulgar and brash but he is a patriot who is putting his life on the line to defeat the globalists evil agenda. They will kill him. They always murder patriots. It is hilarious that you tell me to wake up. Sweet dreams - reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus warned lawmakers on Wednesday that the world order created in part by the United States in the 20th century is under "unprecedented threat from multiple directions," pointing to Russia, China, Islamist extremists and cyber threats.

Those threats are compounded by an America whose "resolve about its defense has become somewhat ambivalent," he added.

"Americans should not take the current international order for granted," Petraeus said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. "It did not will itself into existence. We created it. Likewise, it is not naturally self-sustaining. We have sustained it. If we stop doing so, it will fray and, eventually, collapse."

Petraeus, former director of the CIA, spoke at a hearing about the "state of the world."

Many of Petraeus's remarks hinted at pushing back against statements and policies from President Trump, who had considered Petraeus as a candidate for his secretary of State.

In speaking about the threat from extremists, Petraeus stressed that the majority of Muslims who reject extremism are the "most important ally" in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda.

His comments come amid continued backlash at Trump's executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, suspending all refugees for four months and halting Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Critics have called the order a Muslim ban and said it plays into extremists' narrative that the West is at war with Islam.

"We must also remember that Islamic extremists want to portray this fight as a clash of civilizations, with America at war against Islam," Petraeus said Wednesday. "We must not let them do that; indeed, we must be very sensitive to actions that might give them ammunition to use in such an effort."

Comment: Actually, it was Western thinkers who spread the idea of a "clash of civilizations," and it is people like Petraeus who have led the charge in numerous wars against Muslim people.

Petraeus also warned that adversaries such as Russian President Vladimir Putin are seeking to encourage American ambivalence about its defense and institutions such as NATO.

"President Putin, for instance, understands that, while conventional aggression may occasionally enable Russia to grab a bit of land on its periphery, the real center of gravity is the political will of the major democratic powers to defend Euro-Atlantic institutions like NATO and the EU," Petraeus said. "That is why Russia is tenaciously working to sow doubt about the legitimacy of these institutions and our entire democratic way of life."

Trump has said he wants to improve relations with Russia and has called NATO obsolete.

Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who spoke at Wednesday's hearing alongside Petraeus, also warned about the difficulty in dealing with Russia.

"There is nothing at all wrong with aiming for an improved relationship with Russia, but the U.S. must be aware that Russia calculates its interests in a cold-eyed clinical way and Washington will have to be equally dispassionate in dealing with Putin," he said. "Historically, when Russia encounters weakness or hesitation, it demands more, then blames the opponent for escalation when the opponent resists — then calls for discussions, which it uses to consolidate its gains. Deals don't come easily.

What does Donald Trump want for America? His supporters don’t know. His party doesn’t know. Even he doesn’t know.
If there is a political vision underlying Trumpism, however, the person to ask is not Trump. It’s his éminence grise, Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist of the Trump administration.
Bannon transcended his working-class Virginia roots with a stint in the Navy and a degree from Harvard Business School, followed by a career as a Goldman Sachs financier. He moved to Los Angeles to invest in media and entertainment for Goldman, before starting his own investment bank specializing in media. Through a combination of luck (a fallen-through deal left him with a stake in a hit show called Seinfeld) and a knack for voicing outrage, Bannon remade himself as a minor luminary within the far edge of right-wing politics, writing and directing a slew of increasingly conservative documentaries.
Bannon’s influence reached a new high in 2012 when he took over Breitbart News, an online news site, following the death of creator Andrew Breitbart. While at Breitbart, Bannon ran a popular talk radio call-in show and launched a flame-throwing assault on mainstream Republicans, embracing instead a fringe cast of ultra-conservative figures. Among them was Trump, a frequent guest of the show. They established a relationship that eventually led Bannon to mastermind Trump’s populist romp to the White House, culminating in his taking the administration’s most senior position (alongside the chief of staff, Reince Priebus).
It’s impossible to know for sure what Bannon will do with his newfound power; he honors few interview requests lately, ours included. (The White House did not respond to our request to speak with Bannon.) But his time as a conservative filmmaker and head of Breitbart News reveals a grand theory of what America should be. Using the vast amount of Bannon’s own publicly available words—from his lectures, interviews, films and more—we can construct elements of the vision for America he hopes to realize in the era of Trump.
The three tenets of Bannonism

Bannon’s political philosophy boils down to three things that a Western country, and America in particular, needs to be successful: Capitalism, nationalism, and “Judeo-Christian values.” These are all deeply related, and essential.
America, says Bannon, is suffering a “crisis of capitalism.” (He uses the word “crisis” a lot—more on that later.) Capitalism used to be all about moderation, an entrepreneurial American spirit, and respect for one’s fellow Christian man. In fact, in remarks delivered to the Vatican in 2014, Bannon says that this “enlightened capitalism” was the “underlying principle” that allowed the US to escape the “barbarism” of the 20th century.
Since this enlightened era, things have gradually gotten worse. (Hence the “crisis.”) The downward trend began with the 1960s and ’70s counterculture. “The baby boomers are the most spoiled, most self-centered, most narcissistic generation the country’s ever produced,” says Bannon in a 2011 interview.
He takes on this issue in more detail in Generation Zero, a 2010 documentary he wrote and directed. The film shows one interviewee after another laying out how the “capitalist system” was slowly undermined and destroyed by a generation of wealthy young kids who had their material needs taken care of by hardworking parents—whose values were shaped by the hardship of the Great Depression and World War II—only to cast off the American values that had created that wealth in the first place. This shift gave rise to socialist policies that encouraged dependency on the government, weakening capitalism.
Eventually, this socialist vision succeeded in infiltrating the very highest levels of institutional power in America. “By the late 1990s, the left had taken over many of the institutions of power, meaning government, media, and academe,” says Peter Schweizer, a writer affiliated with Bannon’s Government Accountability Institute, a conservative think tank, in Generation Zero. “And it was from these places and positions of power that they were able to disrupt the system and implement a strategy that was designed to ultimately undermine the capitalist system.” (As he says “undermine the capitalist system,” the film zooms in on the word “Lucifer” in that now-infamous epigraph from Saul Alinsky.)
Underlying all of this is the philosophy of Edmund Burke, an influential 18th-century Irish political thinker whom Bannon occasionally references. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke presents his view that the basis of a successful society should not be abstract notions like human rights, social justice, or equality. Rather, societies work best when traditions that have been shown to work are passed from generation to generation. The baby boomers, Bannon says in a lecture given to the Liberty Restoration Foundation (LRF), failed to live up to that Burkean responsibility by abandoning the tried-and-true values of their parents (nationalism, modesty, patriarchy, religion) in favor of new abstractions (pluralism, sexuality, egalitarianism, secularism).
For both Burke and Bannon, failure to pass the torch results in social chaos.
Steve Bannon, appointed chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump, arrives for the Presidential Inauguration of Trump at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 20, 2017.
Bannon at Trump’s inauguration. (AFP Photo/Pool/Saul Loeb)
The new liberal order
Once in power, the liberal, secular, global-minded elite overhauled the institutions of democracy and capitalism to tighten its grip on power and the ability to enrich itself. The “party of Davos,” as Bannon long ago dubbed this clique, has warped capitalism’s institutions, depriving middle classes everywhere of the wealth they deserve.
This pattern of exploitation came to a head in the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. Wall Street—enabled by fellow global elites in government—spun profits out of speculation instead of investing their wealth in domestic jobs and businesses. When the resulting bubble finally burst, the immoral government stuck hardworking American taxpayers with the bailout bill.
This is the kind of thing that led Bannon to say in that 2011 LRF lecture that there is “socialism for the very wealthy.” The rest of the country, he says, is “common sense, practical, middle-class people.”
There is also “socialism for the very poor,” he adds. “We’ve built a welfare state that is completely and totally unsupportable, and now this is a crisis.”
Bannon wants all of this liberal-sponsored “socialism” to end. He celebrates CNBC host Rick Santelli’s famous 2009 tirade about “those who carry the water and those who drink the water,” which sparked what became the Tea Party, a populist movement focused on tax cuts, fiscal scrimping, and a narrow interpretation of constitutional rights. Channeling the spirit of the Tea Party, Bannon blames Republicans as much as Democrats for taking part in cronyism and corruption at the expense of middle class families.
“We don’t really believe there is a functional conservative party in this country and we certainly don’t think the Republican Party is that,” says Bannon in a 2013 panel in which he discusses Breitbart’s vision. “We tend to look at this imperial city of Washington, this boomtown, as they have two groups, or two parties, that represent the insiders’ commercial party, and that is a collection of insider deals, insider transactions and a budding aristocracy that has made this the wealthiest city in the country.”
In short, in Bannonism, the crisis of capitalism has led to socialism and the suffering of the middle class. And it has made it impossible for the current generation to bequeath a better future to its successors, to fulfill its Burkean duty.
Judeo-Christian values

So what exactly are these traditions that Americans are meant to pass along to future generations? In addition to “crisis of capitalism,” one of Bannon’s favorite terms is “Judeo-Christian values.” This is the second element of his theory of America.
Generation Zero, Bannon’s 2010 documentary, has a lot to say about “American values,” and a lot of this matches closely the ideals of the Tea Party. But since 2013 or 2014, Bannon’s casual emphasis on American values has swelled to include a strong religious component. The successful functioning of America—and Western civilization in general—depends on capitalism, and capitalism depends on the presence of “Judeo-Christian values.”
For Bannon, capitalism was not only responsible for bringing the US out of the war successfully; it also brought about the restoration of Europe and the Pax Americana that followed, he explains in his 2014 speech to the Vatican conference. But capitalism alone is not enough. Unmoored from a Judeo-Christian moral framework, capitalism can be a force of harm and injustice—exemplified by the US’s economic decline.
To restore the health of America’s economy and patch its shredded social fabric, Bannon wants capitalism to be re-anchored by the Judeo-Christian values he believes made the country great throughout its history. This shared morality ensures that businesses invest not just for their own benefit, but also for the good of native workers and future generations.
As in Burke’s view, human rights and civil society do not come from anything abstract, but from tradition. For Bannon, this tradition is God; nation-states that establish people as the arbiters of truth and justice will ultimately give way to tyranny. The “ultimate check on the power of the state is God’s teaching,” says Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson in Torchbearer, the 2016 documentary that Bannon co-wrote, directed and produced. The film is full of Robertson offering similar aphorisms about how society falls apart without a religious foundation.
It’s important to note that “Judeo-Christian values” does not necessarily seem to require that all citizens believe in Christianity. Bannon doesn’t appear to want to undo the separation of church and state or freedom of religion enshrined in America’s constitution. After all, both of these are traditions that have led America to success in the past. What he believes is that the founding fathers built the nation based on a set of values that come from the Judeo-Christian tradition.
In order to make sure the whole country is on board with these values, it must limit or halt the influx of people who do not share them by rallying around nationalism. And it is through this final ingredient—the primacy of the nation-state’s values and traditions—that America can drive a stake through the heart of the global, secular “establishment.”
Nationalism

In addition to enriching themselves and encouraging dependency among the poor, global elites also encourage immigrants to flood the US and drag down wages. Immigrant labor boosts the corporate profits of globalists and their cronies, who leave it to middle-class natives to educate, feed, and care for these foreigners. The atheistic, pluralist social order that has been allowed to flourish recoils at nationalism and patriotism, viewing them as intolerant and bigoted. Without the moral compass of our forefathers, the system is so adrift in relativism that it champions the “rights” of police-hating deadbeats, criminal aliens, and potential terrorists over ordinary Americans, turning cities into hotbeds of violence and undermining national security. As one interviewee declares in Border War: The Battle over Illegal Immigration, another of Bannon’s documentaries, “The right sees [undocumented immigrants] as cheap labor, the left sees this as cheap votes.”
Bannon, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign chairman, attends Trump's Hispanic advisory roundtable meeting in New York, Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016.
The ideologist. (AP/Gerald Herbert)
Mired in near-zero growth and financial chaos, the European Union epitomizes the catastrophic fate of a globalist system governed by elites who are not accountable to the citizens that elected them.
“[P]eople, particularly in certain countries, want to see the sovereignty for their country, they want to see nationalism for their country,” Bannon says in the Vatican speech. “They don’t believe in this kind of pan-European Union or they don’t believe in the centralized government in the United States.”
Nationalism, then, is the mechanism through which Judeo-Christian traditions and values become part of society. That’s because nationalism is fully inclusive, in the sense that it invites people of different backgrounds to unite under a common “American” sense of self. It dissolves minority identities—leading to the emphasis on “colorblindness” of “all lives matter” and opposition to affirmative action. This shared set of Judeo-Christian, nationalist values prevents minorities from claiming special rights. For instance, Generation Zero blames the 2007 housing collapse on “black victimization” that undermined capitalism and encouraged dependency on the government. At the same time, Torchbearer celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a paragon of traditional American morality because his view of human rights was based in Christianity.
The liberal elite’s pervasive emphasis on pluralism and minority rights—and its financial and political support of these groups—constrains shared American-ness. This erosion of Judeo-Christian nationalism weakens the country. Again, this applies not just to America, but also to other Western countries. As Bannon declares at a 2016 South Carolina Tea Party convention, the “swells, the investment bankers, the guys from the EU” are the “same guys who have allowed the complete collapse of the Judeo-Christian West in Europe.”
People who do not sign off on this set of shared values should not be welcome in the US. This logic forms the basis of Bannon’s opposition to immigrants, whose lack of democratic “DNA,” he believes, will harm society.
“These are not Jeffersonian democrats,” Bannon said last year, referring to immigrants heading from Muslim majority countries to Europe, USA Today reported. “These are not people with thousands of years of democracy in their DNA coming up here.” That rationale might justify closing the borders to immigrants from Latin America, even though they are usually devout Catholics.
A theory of generations

The crisis of capitalism and the undermining of the Judeo-Christian West that Bannon proclaims in his Vatican lecture is not an isolated event. It is, in his view, one of a repeated cycle of crises that occurs periodically, each of which inevitably culminates in war and conflict on a grand scale.
“This is the fourth great crisis in American history,” he says in the speech to the LRF. “We had the revolution, we had the Civil War, we had the Great Depression and World War II. This is the great Fourth Turning in American history.”
What he is getting at here is based on the work of Neil Howe and William Strauss, two amateur historians who in the 1990s presented a “generational theory” of American history. The theory views American history through the lens of repeated cycles lasting roughly 80 years, about the length of a single lifetime. Within each 80-year cycle, say Howe and Strauss, are four “turnings”—periods of around 20 years that are characterized by a particular mood. These four moods are the “high,” “awakening,” “unraveling,” and, finally, “crisis.”
The theory is too vague to be proven wrong, and has not been taken seriously by most professional historians. But it is superficially compelling, and plots out to some degree how America’s history has unfolded since its founding.
It’s also clear how the generational theory fits with Bannon’s view that the slow erosion of Judeo-Christian values has been bad for the country. The most recent cycle, according to Howe and Strauss, went from the “high” of the postwar era—a time of which Bannon is particularly fond—to an “awakening” of activism in the ’60s, followed by an “unraveling” of institutions and shared values thanks to the individualism brought on by the preceding “awakening.” That brings us to the current crisis, the great “Fourth Turning,” following the American Revolution, Civil War, and the Great Depression/World War II.
How to solve the crisis: Large-scale conflict

“Turnings” feature very heavily in Generation Zero. “Turnings are like the seasons—every turning is necessary,” says historian David Kaiser in the documentary, over stock footage of clocks ticking, suns rising, and butterflies emerging. “Cities are founded, cities collapse. States rise, states fall,” he continues.
What exactly is the current crisis? Bannon’s view on it has evolved. In 2010, he appears to have regarded it as the result of the debt racked up in the 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis.
“This accumulated debt at all levels of our society poses an immediate existential threat to America,” he says in a 2010 speech in New York City. “Now unlike the manufactured crises of global warming and healthcare, this is a true crisis. This crisis threatens the very sovereignty of our country.”
And in the 2011 LRF lecture, when Bannon declares the US faces the “fourth great crisis in American history,” he still seems to suggest that it consists largely of the global financial crisis that began in 2008.
But there’s more to it than that. Comparing the current crisis to events like the Revolutionary War and World War II, Bannon appears to believe that the US is heading inevitably toward violent conflict. This interpretation is backed up by other statements from and about Bannon.
David Kaiser, the historian interviewed in Generation Zero and also a proponent of the Strauss-Howe theory, recently recounted his conversation with Bannon, including Bannon’s militaristic interpretation of the theory, in Time:
A second, more alarming interaction didn’t show up in the film. Bannon had clearly thought a long time both about the domestic potential and the foreign policy implications of Strauss and Howe. More than once during our interview, he pointed out that each of the three preceding crises had involved a great war, and those conflicts had increased in scope from the American Revolution through the Civil War to the Second World War. He expected a new and even bigger war as part of the current crisis, and he did not seem at all fazed by the prospect.
Let’s follow the logic of this generational theory for a second: If a “high” only comes after a “crisis,” and if a “crisis” must necessarily be an increasingly large-scale war, Bannon is left searching for a major, existence-level enemy. Does the “Party of Davos” alone qualify? Who else could this war be fought against?
In the 2014 Vatican lecture, Bannon goes further. “I think we are in a crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism, and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism,” he says. Bannon adds:
“This may be a little more militant than others…I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam…. See what’s happening, and you will see we’re in a war of immense proportions.”
Bannon’s “global war against Islamic fascism”

The fourth great civilizational showdown—a “global existential war,” as Bannon describes it in July 2016—pits the “Judeo-Christian West” against “Islamic fascism”—especially ISIL. But the threat isn’t necessarily limited to ISIL.
Bannon’s remarks and his affiliations with anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer leave the impression that the enemy might well be Islam in general. As Breitbart notes in 2014, the “erudite Bannon” entertains the argument that Islam’s “war” against Christianity “originated almost from [Islam’s] inception.” He endorses the view that, in the lead-up to World War II, Islam was a “much darker” force facing Europe than fascism. Other ideas he has supported include: a US nonprofit focused on promoting a favorable image of Muslims is a terrorist front; the Islamic Society of Boston mosque was behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Muslim-Americans are trying to supplant the US constitution with Shariah law.
Because Islam is rooted in anti-Christian violence, goes the logic, the only way to ensure that Muslims in America don’t pose a terrorist threat is to make sure they honor the US constitution as the rule of law and accept Judeo-Christian values.
“Darkness, Darth Vader, and Dick Cheney”

There are a few loose ends in Bannon’s thinking—comments that seem consequential, but are vague or don’t fit clearly into any bigger vision.
Consider, for example, his statement that “darkness is good,” which he told Michael Wolff of Hollywood Reporter. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power,” he continued. Or the statement, reported by the Daily Beast, that Bannon views himself as a “Leninist” who wants to “bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
The constant repetition of the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” should convince us that Bannon does not worship Satan. “Darkness is good” appears to suggest that the perception of being dark is good. The quote continues, “It only helps us when [liberals and the media] get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” Thus if the perception of him as a Darth Vader-like figure makes it easier for him to create his enlightened capitalist utopia, so be it.
As for the Leninist remark, it seems pretty consistent with what we know of Bannon thus far: The conservative Burke himself thought that throwing out leaders was justified when “necessary” to restore the old values.
Then again, this delight in being a “dark” oppositional force pairs nicely with his ferocious hatred of the “establishment.” In particular, Bannon’s diatribes against the media brim with spite toward journalists’ arrogance, superiority, and naivety.
On Breitbart radio in early November, he praised the “insight and savvy” of its callers and website commenters, while ranting about a “smug, smirking” New York Times reporter who suggested that Trump rally attendees in Mississippi didn’t know who Nigel Farage, a right-wing populist leader in the UK, was. “120% of the people” at the rally knew of Farage, who is “kind of a cult hero in this global populist movement,” said Bannon. More recently, he told the New York Times (paywall) that the media “should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” He added: “I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
Some of his hatred of the elite seems rooted in his experiences living and working among the elite. He frequently references his Harvard and Goldman Sachs pedigrees. However, when he describes his time as an elite, it’s as an “outsider”—a term he used in the early days to describe the populist movement he represented—passing among the privileged and deciphering their nefariousness for ordinary middle-class Americans. For example, in his 2014 Vatican speech, he says:
I could see this when I worked at Goldman Sachs — there are people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to people in Kansas and in Colorado, and they have more of this elite mentality that they’re going to dictate to everybody how the world’s going to be run. I will tell you that the working men and women of Europe and Asia and the United States and Latin America don’t believe that. They believe they know what’s best for how they will comport their lives.
But this cosmic avenger role Bannon seems to claim as voice-giver to the “forgotten” middle-classes hints at a deeper relish of conflict. A fascination with warfare and violence emerges in, for instance, his frequent allusion to the glory of the amphibious invasion at Normandy, or his taking the time out of his duties as Breitbart’s CEO to pen an obituary for Vo Nguyen Giap, a Vietnamese general who led a war for independence that Bannon described as “one of the bloodiest and hardest fought by all combatants.” In particular, the aesthetic of his documentaries can be nauseatingly violent. Torchbearer is a tour de force of gore. (There are at least six separate shots of falling guillotines, as well as lingering footage of nuclear radiation victims, mass burials from Nazi gas chambers, and various ISIL atrocities.)
What all this means for the Trump presidency

Even before he took charge of Trump’s campaign, in Aug. 2016, Bannon’s philosophies pervaded its rhetoric. If there was any question about the role his views would play in the Trump administration, the last two weeks have made it clear: The president’s leadership hangs from the scaffolding of Bannon’s worldview.
Trump’s inaugural address was basically a telepromptered Bannon rant. Where inaugural speeches typically crackle with forward-looking optimism, Trump’s was freighted with anti-elite resentment. He described a Bannonistic vision in which the “wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.” The “forgotten men and women of our country”—a meme that Trump claimed, but that appears in Generation Zero—had a cameo too.
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting on cyber security in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017.
Commander-in-chief and Chief Strategist. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Trump heaped blame on the “establishment,” which “protected itself” but not American citizens from financial ruin. “And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land,” Trump continued. “We’ve made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.”
“America first” is Bannon’s economic nationalism in slogan form. Trump’s vow to “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth” was a mellowed-out version of the West’s battle against “Islamic fascists.”
There’s more. Trump’s remarks that the “Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity,” that “most importantly, we will be protected by God,” and that children from both Detroit and Nebraska are “infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator” seemed kind of bizarre coming from a not-very-religious man. They don’t, however, in the context of Bannon’s insistence in Torchbearer that a society without God disintegrates.
Within days of the inauguration came the dizzying spurt of executive actions—written by Bannon and Stephen Miller, a White House policy advisor—many of which contained “press release-friendly ‘purpose’ sections making extravagant claims not usually found in executive orders,” says Andrew Rudalevige, government professor at Bowdoin College.
Bannon’s philosophy toward Islam seems likely to have influenced the order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Recalling that line about how immigrants are not “Jeffersonian democrats,” the document prescribes ensuring the allegiance to America’s “founding principles” and the US constitution of anyone admitted to the country, including tourists. Trump also implied in a TV interview with the Christian Broadcast Network that he wanted to prioritize Christians refugees over Muslims, accusing the US government of favoring Muslim refugees over Christians in the past (a claim for which there’s no evidence). Some argue (fairly convincingly) that Trump’s ban risks lending credence to ISIL recruitment propaganda claiming that the US is leading the West in a war on all of Islam.
Another of the new administration’s focuses—the danger posed by Mexicans flooding over the border—is also a central theme of Bannon’s vision of America under seige. Trump’s executive action declares that “many” unauthorized immigrants “present a significant threat to national security and public safety,” though criminology and immigration experts say most evidence suggests immigrants in general commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens. “Sanctuary” cities—those that voluntarily cooperate with immigration enforcement only on deporting unauthorized immigrants convicted of violent or serious crimes—are also critiqued in Bannonist terms: They have “caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.” In other words, they do not share America’s values.
Finally, Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade deal supported by what would count as the “elite,” includes a special shout-out to “the American worker,” the classic Bannon theme.
Bannonism begins?

Bannon savors the power of symbolism. That symbolic power infused Trump’s campaign, and now, apparently, his administration’s rhetoric. After all, as Andrew Breitbart made clear when he famously dubbed him the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party,” Bannon is a master propagandist. He’s also a master opportunist, going by his fitful shifts in career. So it’s possible that the narrative flowing through Trump’s inaugural address and executive actions is simply what Bannon has calibrated over time to rouse maximum populist fervor—and that it doesn’t reflect plans to upend America.
There’s also, however, the possibility that Bannon is steering Trump toward the “enlightened capitalist,” Judeo-Christian, nationalistic vision that he has come to believe America needs.
Which it is, we can’t know, of course: Only Bannon knows what Bannon really wants. What we do know for sure, though, is that a man who has staked out a deep desire for a violent resurgence of “Western civilization” now has the power to fulfill it.
TOO MUCH TALK
Liberals are so busy confessing and denouncing privilege they’ve forgotten to fix it
Noah Berlatsky2 hours ago
A pro-abortion rights protester and an anti-abortion protester jostle with their bullhorns as they demonstrate in the hopes of a ruling in their favor on decisions at the Supreme Court building
TALENT MAGNETS
Nearly 100 tech companies have filed a court document opposing Trump’s immigration ban
Josh HorwitzFebruary 06, 2017
DATE IMPORTED:September 07, 2016Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook waves during an Apple media event in San Francisco, California, U.S.
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'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
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Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

With a month to go in his shockingly victorious campaign, Donald Trump unveiled a new slogan: Drain the Swamp. The slogan supposedly differentiated him from Hillary Clinton, whose alleged corruption for months dominated headlines and caused millions of Americans to inherently distrust the Democratic candidate. “Drain the Swamp” also pointed to Trump’s repeated campaign promise of standing up to “career politicians” and returning Washington to the people. But like many of his other promises, this one is quickly being thrown to the wayside. Trump is doing all he can to fill the swamp with more monsters.

First of all, the supposed anti-establishment, populist candidate announced that his chief-of-staff would be Republican National Committee chair and spineless, acquiescent “leader” Reince Priebus. All authoritarian strongmen reward those who bow to their wishes and pose no threat to power accumulation. Priebus perfectly fit the bill and the Kenosha political operative who commissioned a 2012 autopsy that concluded Republicans needed to better appeal to Latinos by moderating their rhetoric will head the White House staff.

Not content with solely appointing the establishment’s figurehead to his administration, Trump named Steve Bannon, former Breitbart executive and known anti-Semite, racist, and sexist, as a senior adviser. Long before becoming Trump’s campaign CEO, Bannon turned Breitbart into a pro-Trump outlet that worked closely with his Government Accountability Institute (which published the dubious book “Clinton Cash”) to undermine both Republican obstacles in the primary and Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. The site has no plans to abandon its 24/7, wall-to-wall pro-Trump coverage. But now that its white nationalist former executive is steps from the Oval Office, Breitbart can – and certainly will – use proximity and connections to the president to become a de facto government propaganda outlet. Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart employee who left the site after questioning its coverage of the Trump campaign, worries that “it will be as close as we are ever to have…to a state-run media enterprise.”

Trump campaigned extensively on the egregiously incorrect statement that he self-funded his campaign. Doing so, he argued, would help him #DrainTheSwamp because he would have no allegiance to – and thus no reason to favor – donors. Not the case. Already, Trump’s donors are “shaping the incoming administration.” Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire financier Robert Mercer (a prominent Trump donor who has a major stake in Breitbart) is helping shape the presidential transition. Peter Thiel, mega-Trump donor and Silicon Valley billionaire who funded a court case that bankrupted Gawker, sits on Trump’s executive transition committee. Other lobbyists (against whom Trump repeatedly railed while on the campaign trail) and fundraisers have been charged with hiring and planning executive agency transition. It’s hard to drain the swamp when lobbyists and donors guide the president’s assumption of power.

Throughout the campaign, questions lingered about what would happen to Trump’s many businesses if he won. Newsweek aptly pointed out that there are many potential conflicts of interest with potentially calamitous results for Trump because of his businesses’ foreign ties. It seems as if Trump’s children will be running the private businesses. However, reports have emerged that Trump team has requested top-level security clearance for his children, the very ones who will be charged with running the companies, meaning they would be considered unpaid national security advisers (a way of skirting nepotism rules). That means the individuals running multi-billion dollar businesses with ties to foreign banks and governments will have access to top-secret information. Such ability for corruption dwarfs by magnitudes the unproven accusations of improper behavior Trump and his surrogates hurled at the Clintons for alleged pay-to-play schemes at their Foundation during Hillary’s time at the Department of State.

'....Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment...'
Steve Bannon

'...We have to face a very unpleasant fact. There is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global... every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act...'

'....He is obsessed with the 1999 book The Fourth Turning, by sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe, which posits that every generation in American history responds to the failure of its institutions by cataclysmic but ultimately necessary violence: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Second World War.

During the making of Bannon’s documentary Generation Zero – which began as a film about The Fourth Turning – historian David Kaiser recalls Bannon asking him to predict that the next bout of violence – now overdue – would be the biggest one yet.....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

February 9, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Amnesty International's 48 page report titled, "Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria," boasts bold claims, concluding:
...the Syrian authorities’ violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya.
However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section titled, "Methodology," Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria's opposition.

Image: What you are looking at is a 3D model fabricated entirely in the United Kingdom, based solely on satellite pictures and hearsay. Passed off as evidence this technique of "forensic architecture" may soon become a new tool in the dissemination of war propaganda if it is not exposed.

Within the section titled, "Methodology," the report admits:
Despite repeated requests by Amnesty International for access to Syria, and specifically for access to detention facilities operated by the Syrian authorities, Amnesty International has been barred by the Syrian authorities from carrying out research in the country and consequently has not had access to areas controlled by the Syrian government since the crisis began in 2011. Other independent human rights monitoring groups have faced similar obstacles.
In other words, Amnesty International had no access whatsoever to the prison, nor did any of the witnesses it allegedly interview provide relevant evidence taken from or near the prison.

The only photographs of the prison are taken from outer space via satellite imagery. The only other photos included in the report are of three men who allege they lost weight while imprisoned and a photo of one of eight alleged death certificates provided to family members of detainees who died at Saydnaya.

Articles like, "Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof," provide a detailed examination of Amnesty's "statistics," while articles like, "Amnesty International “Human Slaughterhouse” Report Lacks Evidence, Credibility, Reeks Of State Department Propaganda," cover the politically-motivated nature of both Amnesty International and the timing of the report's promotion across the Western media.

However, there is another aspect of the report that remains unexplored - the fact that Amnesty International itself has openly admitted that the summation of the report was fabricated in the United Kingdom at Amnesty International's office, using a process they call "forensic architecture," in which the lack of actual, physical, photographic, and video evidence, is replaced by 3D animations and sound effects created by designers hired by Amnesty International.

I have been trying to get a detailed reply to a message I sent to Diana Sayed of AI before Christmas; I have just 'reminded' her again, and emailed her: '....Any chance of a response, or do I have to go public?...'
I added the latest "Saydnaya" Report' info._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Wednesday 8 February 2017 18.49 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 8 February 2017 22.46 GMT
America has gone from the Obama Years to the Trump Years, like going from the West Wing to a sitcom where the incidental music involves a tuba. I actually think Donald Trump is going to prove a lot of people wrong, but sadly not George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, or whoever wrote the Book of Revelation. It says a lot about the man that building a giant wall isn’t even in the top five most Game of Thrones things about him. Of course, presidents always enter office with something to prove, it’s just rarely their sanity.

You look into Trump’s eyes and you see the fear and confusion of a man who has just been told he’s got stage-four cervical cancer. He is a super-villain in a world without heroes, a man so obnoxious and unhappy that karma may see him reincarnated as himself. You kind of wish he’d get therapy, but at this stage it’s like hiring a window cleaner for a burning building. It’s still difficult to classify him exactly: he’s not a classic Nazi, but would burn books if his supporters knew how to read. Hillary Clinton was obviously the preferred establishment candidate, and whoever was on the rota for this election cycle at the Illuminati really dropped the ball, but Trump is still very much someone that the permanent powers have assessed they can work with.

One of his first acts as president was an executive order to ban federal money going to international groups that perform or provide information on abortions. Making it clear that he’ll only provide billion-dollar funding to terminate young lives overseas if some kind of US-made drone is involved. This bill stops funding for birth control in countries where religion and culture mean women have no access to alcohol. Think it through – have you any idea how hard it is inducing a miscarriage just by drinking tonic? Call me a cynic, but when male politicians defund reproductive health centres, I always wonder how many abortions they’ve funded themselves. Is this just revenge for some clinic in the 1980s rejecting their idea for a loyalty card scheme? There’s probably business pressure behind this bill, too. Maybe American corporations are worried that fewer kids in the developing world means no one to do the detailed stitching on their clothing lines. I suppose everybody’s politics are shaped by the particular bubble they live in. Trump sees anti-choice arguments all the time; the only time he sees an argument for abortion is in a mirror.

Trump cares about the same things a member of noughties rap outfit G Unit cares about: women, money and vengeance. Yet, random though it seems, his fight with the judiciary could well be tactical. He will blame them for the next act of terrorism that occurs then declare a state of emergency where everybody has to stay indoors while his tweets are read out over a Tannoy. I’m in an unusual position in that I don’t support Trump being invited to Britain, but I do hope he comes. Britain is divided at the moment and nothing unites us like hating Americans. Britain is good at mockery, and it will hopefully be a bit like when David Blaine came and sat in that plastic box. Of course, Farage has gone full Lord Haw-Haw, correctly gauging that history wasn’t going to judge him very kindly anyway, and that there might not be any. If the Queen ever has to shake Trump’s hand, she will put on so many gloves she’ll look like Mickey Mouse. I find it amusing that the same people who think it’s ridiculous for Mexico to be asked to pay for America’s wall think it’s fine for us to pay for Trident. To be fair, I managed to get my neighbour to build a wall and pay for it, and all it cost me was the price of a thong to sunbathe in.

Melania Trump
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Melania Trump: waiting for Stockholm syndrome to set in. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters
My best guess at the great man’s next move is the hoisting of an enormous burning eye above Trump Tower. It’s a building for which the words tacky and gaudy somehow seem too jolly and frivolous. Close up, it looks like the memory stick where some giant alien sex-killer stores his worst atrocities, or a version of the black slab in 2001: A Space Odyssey, sent to restore our consciousness to the level of chimpanzees. Trapped inside, Melania Trump has a look that I’ve never seen before, the eyes of someone waiting with increasing impatience for Stockholm syndrome to set in. The look of a woman frantically trying to unlearn English, appalled to find that this only makes her understand her husband more clearly. Perhaps women trapped in marriages with monsters resort to plastic surgery so that it becomes easier to leave a wax head in their bed while they work on their tunnel at night. Perhaps the manicures are to hide the endless digging. Perhaps it’s the secret of their figures. They’re not dieting, they’re eating those peanut butter and fried egg sandwiches Michael Phelps used to train on and spending their nights burrowing like a * gopher.

You have to say it’s surprising that, with so much to work with, the response from the Democratic establishment has been to suggest that Trump is a Russian spy. How could he possibly keep a secret? He almost never stops talking, seemingly delivering a live feed of his internal monologue, using national television appearances to ramble about murdering terrorists’ families and blurt out fantasies about torture. Admittedly, any expert psychologist will tell you that torture does work, but only if you first threaten them with bare electrical wires. I’m equally baffled that so much Democratic criticism focuses on his incompetence and instability. Competent, focused Nazis are absolutely the worst kind.

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President Trump in disbelief at travel ban appeals court process
Equally, I don’t really understand commentators who say it’s vital not to normalise any of Trump’s actions. They have been normalised for eight years by Barack Obama while many of the same people looked the other way. Banks and corporations writing their own legislation; war by executive order; mass deportations; kill lists: it’s all now as normal and American as earthquakes caused by fracked gases being ignited by burning abortion clinics. Of course, there is a moral difference in whether such actions are performed by a Harvard-educated constitutional law professor or a gibbering moron, and the distinction goes in Trump’s favour. That’s not to say Trump won’t plumb profound new depths of awfulness, like the disbanding of the environmental protection agency set up by hippy, libtard snowflake Richard Nixon.

Obviously, the most important issue here is why America hasn’t done as well as in the past at capitalising on these horrors to create good music about the political turmoil. I mean, where is their Bob Dylan? Where are their anthems about drone warfare killing innocent civilians? Instead we’ve got Drake begging women via song to text him back after a fight at the Cheesecake Factory. Britain seems to be in an even deeper cultural torpor. Everything from Teen Vogue to young adult fiction has a more radical take than our press, and the Trump administration is satirised by American television with a venom that the British television industry, for its own government, does its best to avoid.

Trump is at war with Saturday Night Live. He thinks it’s horrible and yet he can’t stop watching. Pretty much the same as how the world feels about him. How can he expect to escape ridicule? Being on reality TV is the closest he ever got to reality. His children look like a teen movie about Wall Street vampires directed by Uday Hussein. He has cultivated a square face that’s the shade of a banned food colouring and the muscle tone of a coma patient. He looks like aliens came to Earth and made a human costume after seeing one commercial for a car dealership. Really, he seems like the sort of person that a competent leftwinger with a humane alternative offer should be able to beat at the next election. Sad, really, that the only way Bernie Sanders could return in 2020 is as a glass sliding about a ouija board.

Trump and family
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Trump and family: like a teen movie about Wall Street vampires directed by Uday Hussein. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
During the campaign, Trump said he wanted to stop America from making foreign military interventions, possibly because he realised he would need the army for suppressing the domestic population. Yet someone so media-obsessed can’t help but realise that among all the gaffes and flak, his insane aggression towards China and Iran has escaped censure. The media and political establishment largely approve. They only fret that he doesn’t take the same planet-threatening posture with Russia. War sells papers, television advertising and arms. It makes politicians feel important. It provides nationalism with clear enemies to define itself against. Despite all the other failures this administration promises, the US might finally be on time for a world war.

So what do we do? I think, first of all, it’s worth noting that, under an authoritarian government, all protest will be vilified anyway. Even before Trump, people got very upset that quarterback Colin Kaepernick didn’t stand during the national anthem. You’d think that would fall under the list of White People Approved Forms of Protest, along with leaving a voicemail for your senator kindly asking them to stop shooting black people in the street. Personally, I think there’s limited value in moralising with, or fact-checking, regimes that don’t care about morals or facts. In Britain we also have an increasingly authoritarian government. We send them petitions telling them that we don’t want them reading our emails, which they presumably already know from reading our emails. We face a brief political period that, unchecked, will bring at least irreversible climate change and, at worst, nuclear war.

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